LaSalle chasing No. 1 spot

Since the sale of Chicago leader Bank One to JPMorgan Chase, LaSalle Bank has been boosting its market share, while its rival's slips

October 17, 2006|By Becky Yerak, Tribune staff reporter.

In the race to gather Chicago-area deposits, No. 1 JPMorgan Chase & Co. has lost market share, and No. 2 LaSalle Bank has made its biggest inroads in more than 12 years, according to data compiled by a federal regulator.

In the 12 months ended June 30, Chase's share of deposits in the Chicago area dipped to 15.3 percent from 16 percent, according to figures released last week by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. As recently as June 2003, the market share of Bank One Corp., the Chicago powerhouse purchased by New York-based Chase in 2004, exceeded 20 percent.

Meanwhile, LaSalle, owned by Dutch bank ABN Amro, saw its market share rise to 14.1 percent from 12.9 percent. It's the narrowest lead Chase/Bank One has held over LaSalle since at least 1994, the earliest year for which FDIC statistics are available online.

But don't expect much crowing from LaSalle. It says the data can be problematic because the banks can crunch the numbers they furnish to the FDIC in different ways.

"There's no standardization," David Rudis, president of LaSalle's personal financial-services division, pointed out Monday. "But what is clear is that we're more than holding our own, and that newer entrants in the market are not having much of an impact."

Washington Mutual, which entered the Chicago retail banking scene in 2003 and ranks fourth in the number of branches, had a market share of only 0.4 percent, though that was up from 0.3 percent. Also, despite boosting its number of branches to 42 from 30, Bank of America's market share increased only to 1.8 percent from 1.7 percent.

For its part, Chase said one must drill deeper into the FDIC numbers to get a truer picture of market share.

Chase excludes the big downtown branch of all banks because those often include large corporate deposits, which can swing dramatically and, therefore, skew the data, spokesman Thomas Kelly said.

"In looking at our 2006 numbers compared to a year earlier, excluding the big downtown branch, our deposits increased $1.4 billion, or 7.1 percent, to $21 billion from a year earlier," he said.

Chase, which has 339 local branches, up from 324 during the previous reporting period, was "pleased" with that performance, Kelly said. Its total Chicago-area deposits rose to $40.07 billion from $38.4 billion.

LaSalle's total deposits in the Chicago market rose to nearly $37 billion from nearly $31 billion. All but about $855 million of that $6 billion increase came from its downtown branch at 135 S. LaSalle St. LaSalle has 142 branches, up from 140 in the previous reporting period.

No. 3 Harris, owned by Canada's BMO Financial, also eked out a gain, with its market share rising to 9.5 percent from 9 percent. The number of Harris branches increased to 179 in the last reporting period from 163.

The figures also continue to illustrate the competitiveness of the Chicago banking market, where the top three players control less than 40 percent of the market. In contrast, the top three banks in Milwaukee, Detroit, Minneapolis and Cleveland claim combined market share ranging from 56 percent to 61 percent.

A new entrant among Chicago's top five was Corus Bank, which had market share of 3.2 percent, up from 2.3 percent in the previous reporting period.

LaSalle's Rudis said Corus has offered among the highest CD rates in the market. Corus, which has 14 area branches, couldn't be reached for comment.